BERNADOTTE
By Friedrich Wencker-Wildberg
The career of Bernadotte was one of the most remarkable of recent centuries in its wild improbability. The son of a bailiff who lived at Pau in the South of France, he was created by Napoleon Prince of Pontecorvo in 1806 and nominated in 1810 as Crown Prince of Sweden by the Swedes themselves. He was largely responsible for the addition of Norway to Sweden at the end of the Napoleonic Wars and reigned from 1818 until his death in 1844 as King Charles XIV of Norway and Sweden. There is not much proportion in the book (Jarrolds, 18s.) ; only a few pages are given to Bernadotte's reign in Sweden in contrast to many devoted to the part which he played in the Napoleonic, campaigns. This lack of proportion is all the greater since he was not a good general. He was, however, a capable administrator and treated the territories occupied in the course of Napoleon's campaigns in Germany with wise con- sideration. But surely his greatest work was his government of Sweden, an entirely foreign • country, and the establishment of one of the most meri- torious and lasting European dynasties. The book is well translated by Mr. Kirkness though he has a tiresome habit of translating German expressions literally into English. It is not English to speak of "waltzing responsibility" on to others ; nor can the statement, on page 277, that the population of Sweden at the beginning of :the nine- teenth century was only five thousand, be correct..
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